Two years ago, we posted the phrase Kenny Beats Is Working On The New IDLES Album, which was factually true even if the end results were a little underwhelming. (The hip-hop producer ended up only providing some additional programming on their 2020 album Ultra Mono.) But today IDLES are announcing a whole new album, CRAWLER, which was co-produced in its entirety by Kenny Beats. The band’s guitarist Mark Bowen also served as producer, and they recorded in at Bath’s Real World Studios during the pandemic.
Today, the British band are releasing the album’s lead single, “The Beachland Ballroom,” which is named after the Cleveland, Ohio music venue. “It’s the most important song on the album, really,” bandleader Joe Talbot said in a statement. “There’s so many bands that go through the small rooms and dream of making it into the big rooms. Being able to write a soul tune like this made me go, fuck — we’re at a place where we’re actually allowed to go to these big rooms and be creative and not just go through the motions and really appreciate what we’ve got. The song is sort of an allegory of feeling lost and getting through it. It’s one that I really love singing.”
Listen to “The Beachland Ballroom” below.
TRACKLIST:
01 “MTT 420 RR”
02 “The Wheel”
03 “When The Lights Come On”
04 “Car Crash”
05 “The New Sensation”
06 “Stockholm Syndrome”
07 “The Beachland Ballroom”
08 “Crawl!”
09 “Meds”
10 “Kelechi”
11 “Progress”
12 “Wizz”
13 “King Snake”
14 “The End”
CRAWLER is out 11/12 via Partisan.
